


Phantom in the Breakers

by MitchMatchedSocks



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beach, Halloween, Lite Monster Fucking, M/M, Mermaids, Mild Blood, Minor Violence, Monster!Kai, Murdermaids, Ocean, Spooky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 20:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21258902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MitchMatchedSocks/pseuds/MitchMatchedSocks
Summary: In a little beach town, a ghost stands at the end of the pier and lures people into the sea. Sehun learns about him the hard way.





	Phantom in the Breakers

**Author's Note:**

> Its tagged for violence to be cautious and there are some minor injuries but i'm not trying to gross anybody out. I'm not here for the shock factor. Just enough to up the spook and make the danger real. If some discussion of mermaid kai luring people to their deaths by drowning them and eating them is something that you will find upsetting then this is not the fic for you. None of this happens on screen.
> 
> I only had a week to put this together so its not done in time for halloween. I think once I publish all the chapters which will be like three tops, i'm going to edit it back down into one chapter again.

The eerie crash of the waves and the wail of the wind through the old wooden beams made the naked man standing at the end of the pier even more strange. It was too chilly to be naked at night. Sehun wondered if he was drunk, but the man stood perfectly straight and still in the little lights on the pier railings that lit his tan legs from knee down and cast the rest of him into a dim shadow. He was tall and perfectly sculpted, like a gorgeous marble statue that had been taken out of a museum and plopped unceremoniously on the end of a dock in the middle of the night. Sehun had the surreal feeling that he’d been dropped into a dream.

As Sehun got closer, the man turned and looked at him, and all the hair stood up on the back of Sehun’s neck. He cautiously took a few more steps stopped. “Hey, are you okay?” The man didn’t answer, but Sehun was close enough to see him now. He was startlingly handsome. The kind of movie star good looks you only saw on magazine covers with his strong jaw and full lips, and he seemed totally unbothered by his nakedness. Sehun stepped forward again, and like a mirror, the man backed up. Sehun froze. They were dangerously close to the open end of the pier. 

“Hey, look out behind you. There’s no railing.” 

The man didn’t respond. His facial expression didn’t change. Sehun began wondering which drugs he was on. “The wind is too cold to be out here without clothes, you should come in,” he said gently, but loud enough to be heard over the wind and the waves. “I’m going to come closer, okay?” He stepped closer, about fifteen feet away now, and then the man stepped back again. Sehun froze, and so did the man. The end of the pier was just a few yards behind him, and after that a long twenty foot drop into the churning waves that crashed against the barnacle crusted beams of the old pier. Sehun’s heart raced up into his throat. 

“Okay, I’m just going to back up. Sorry to spook you. Um. Please come get warm.” This time he stepped back, and gasped when the man stepped back too, closer to the sea. “Stop, don’t move.” The man stayed frozen, still blank and expressionless. Sehun took another step back, and so did the man. Sehun tried stepping forward, but the man still stepped back. 

“What are you doing?” Sehun’s voice shook. His heart hammered in his chest. “Be careful, you’re going to fall.” He took another step back, and the man mirrored him. Any move Sehun made would move the man further towards the drop, so he didn’t move at all. The man didn’t move either. He didn’t even sway in the wind, he just stared at Sehun, poised to take another step back. His dark eyes stared Sehun down, waiting for him, not even blinking. Sehun didn’t know what to do, so he stood, heart racing, and hoped the man came to his sense. Then, after a few long, long minutes, the man moved on his own. He took another step back, and then another. He was only a few paces from the edge. “Stop!” 

Sehun watched in horror as he took another step, just two more and he would be dead. “Stop!” he yelled again, and dashed forward as the man took another step back. 

And right as he reached the edge, the man smirked. His eyes flashed in the dim light like an animal in headlights, and he fell backwards off the edge of the pier with a strange glint of silver.

Sehun screeched to a halt at the edge of the pier and stared down into the water. He couldn’t see the man anywhere in the black waves, but blood pounded in his ears, hands shaking, skin crawling. The waves swelled and crashed beneath him, some of them almost eight feet high. Sehun backed away from the edge so fast he fell on his ass, and then scrambled upright and sprinted back towards the shore like the devil was behind him. 

The police station was just a block from the pier, straight up the main drag. Sehun had taken note that morning as he was moving in. He crashed through the front door and into the waiting room. A man with big wide eyes in uniform behind the desk nearly jumped out of his chair clutching his heart as Sehun stumbled in. 

“There was a man!” he began, and had to stop to drag in enough air to keep talking. “Fell off the pier!”

To his surprise, the officer let out a long sigh and relaxed. “Was he naked?” 

Sehun’s head spun a little. “Yes?” 

His shock only got worse when the officer smiled. “Good job not going in after him.” 

“What?”

“He does that all the time. At least four people have gone in after him and died. We think he’s some kind of ghost.” 

It took a couple seconds for Sehun to process what he’d just heard. Some kind of ghost. A ghost. The reflective eyes, the flash of silver, the way Sehun’s hair had stood on end. The man hadn’t been real. He’d backed himself off the pier before, and four people had followed him. Sehun had almost followed him. 

“Hey, you good?” 

Sehun sat down on the floor and wondered if he’d ever be able to breathe properly again. His skin crawled remembering how close he’d gotten to a real actual supernatural monster. The horror was still fresh in his mind. He could still see his unhinged little smirk, see him fall, see him standing still as a corpse and waiting for Sehun to come closer. He could almost see himself diving over the end of the pier after him. He wondered what he would have found in the water below. 

A little plastic cup full of water slid into his vision. “You wanna go to the hospital?” 

“I’m fine,” he tried to say, and it came out in a shaky whisper. 

“If you say so.” The officer pushed the water closer, and Sehun frowned at it for a moment and wondered why a police office by the ocean couldn’t keep reusable glasses or at least something made of paper, but he took it and drank anyway. It was getting easier to breathe. “Hey, I tell you more about the ghost case, if you’re up for it.” 

“I think I need a minute,” Sehun rasped. He scooted backwards so he could lean up against the desk. He officer got comfortable on the floor with him, which was nice. He checked his phone and told a joke over the walkie to some other officers, and by the time he was done with that Sehun’s breath had finally slowed down. His skin still hadn’t stopped crawling, but he thought he could manage some talking. 

“So what brings you to town,” the officer asked, and Sehun was very glad they weren’t jumping right into more ghost info. 

“New job. Um. Receptionist at the marine science center.” 

“Oh gotcha. That’s a nice little place, you’ll like that. How long have you been in town?” 

“Since last night.” He was already considering leaving, just to get as far from that god damn pier as he possibly could. 

“Cool, cool. I’m Kyungsoo, by the way. Welcome to town.” 

“Nice to meet you.” 

“Why were you on the pier at one in the morning?” 

Sehun suddenly remembered that he was talking to a cop, and that he’d jumped a locked gate to get out there. 

“Uh… just taking a walk. I like the ocean when it’s windy and dark, it’s kinda creepy in a fun way. Or it used to be fun. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enjoy it again.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” 

“Sorry for, uh, trespassing or whatever.” 

Kyungsoo waved a hand. “It’s not illegal or anything. The gate is only there because of the ghost. We ordered a bigger one that people can’t hop. And bigger signs.” 

“There were signs?” 

Kyungsoo nodded. “Yeah, we put up lots of ‘don’t follow naked men off the dock’ signs.” 

Sehun sighed. “I must have missed those.” 

“I’m surprised no one told you about that yet. The pier ghost is pretty famous around here. We call him Kai.” Sehun still wasn’t sure he was ready for more pier ghost info, but he got it anyway. “The first time was about two years ago. We got security footage from the surf shop of somebody walking out on the pier at night and they never came back. We thought it was suicide, but their family didn’t. Then it happened again seven months later, and again a couple months after that, but that time it was a young couple on their honeymoon. Only the man jumped in, so we had a witness.” 

Sehun took a few deep breaths and pulled his knees up to his chest. 

“Since then, we’ve had one dumb tourist disappear the same way, and couple people who were smart enough not to follow Kai in. We had a forensic artist draw him, wanna see?” 

It was probably a bad idea. Sehun’s gut twisted, but he nodded. Kyungsoo got up and went into the back, and Sehun immediately felt panic flare up in his chest as soon as he was alone. He stared at the glass door and half expected a stiff, tall, naked figure with an eerie blank stare to appear on the other side. 

“Here it is.” Kyungsoo came back around the counter and presented a piece of thick paper with a charcoal sketch on it. Sehun’s chest constricted as the man’s face snapped back into his mind. 

“His face was a little more slender that that,” he said, voice shaking, “and he had fuller lips, but the eyes are perfect.” They even had the same unnerving blankness. Sehun couldn’t stop looking at it. “I didn’t jump,” he said slowly, “because right before he fell, I saw the light flash in his eyes. You know when you shine a flashlight at an animal in the dark? Oh my god.” 

He tore his eyes away from the drawing and curled up tighter. “Hey, are you sure you don’t want to go to a trauma center or something?” 

“Can I just stay here for a bit?” 

“Yeah, absolutely. I hate night shift.” 

Kyungsoo filled him in on all the local gossip and ran him through a list of all the restaurants in town from best to worst. Sehun stuck around and listened to Kyungsoo complain about the teenagers who were on a vandalization spree, and the rednecks who liked fireworks too much, and only drove Sehun home when the sky had begun turning gray. He lay down, alone in his room, and got a couple fitful hours or sleep before his first shift at work. 

“It’s pretty quiet from this time of year on out,” Baekhyun, naturalist and head of public relations, explained as they walked up the boardwalk towards a little seafood diner for lunch (Kyungsoo’s third favorite). The main drag was full of tourists purchasing shitty overpriced t-shirts and carrying ice cream cones. “This will probably be our last busy weekend before the cold weather rolls in and schools are all back in session.” 

“Do we get any business during the winter?” 

Baekhyun shook his head. “Not much. We get locals, of course, and a lot of us have research to do and papers to write, you know. You’ll probably be pretty bored until summer though.” 

“That’s okay, I can use slow days to write. I’m trying to get a book published.” 

“Oh, rad dude.” 

Sehun realized they weren’t heading into the main drag, so they were going to have to walk by the pier. He clenched his fists and tried not to look at it. 

“Oh dude,” Baekhyun said right as they got level with the handicap ramp. “Don’t go on the pier at night. Check out that sign.” There was a wooden board nailed to the railing by the stairs with a badly painted naked man on a dock, ken doll style, and a big skull and crossbones. “I know this sounds crazy but there’s a ghost on the pier that drowns people. Like, four tourists have died. Just trusts me.”

“I won’t go out there.” 

“Like, I know it’s hard to believe, but seriously.” 

“I believe it.” 

Baekhyun didn’t seem satisfied with that for some reason. “…really?” 

“Yes.” 

The fish tacos at Baekhyun’s diner were actually pretty good. Half way through, Kyungsoo came in with another young police officer with really big eyes. He immediately waved and came over. 

Sehun checked his watch. Kyungsoo couldn’t have gotten more than five hours of sleep. “You’re up early.” 

“We had a meeting. I’m going right back to sleep after this. Minseok, meet Sehun.”

“Oh hey!” Minseok ruffled Baekhyun’s hair as he leaned over him and shook Sehun’s hand. “Good job not jumping.” 

“Thanks…” 

Baekhyun narrowed his eyes. “Wait.” 

“Sehun spent like four hours with me in the station last night after he learned about the pier ghost the hard way.” 

Baekhyun’s jaw dropped. “What?? You saw Kai? No way! Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“It was horrifying and I don’t want to relive it.” 

“Oh fair enough. Tell me all about it next week then.” 

Sehun put down his fish taco with a sigh. 

On the way back, they passed a very crowded ice cream shop. A line wrapped around a tightly packed cluster of tiny tables and down the block. Through the bodies, Sehun caught sight of a strong jawline. He blinked and searched. A strikingly handsome young man sat at a table by himself, without ice cream, in an unbuttoned white shirt and board shorts. His familiar dark eyes stared right into Sehun’s and followed as he passed with that same, unnerving, blank stare as the night before. Kai. 

“Sehun?” 

Sehun whipped back around and realized he’d been craning his neck over his shoulder. And he realized he felt dizzy. His heart was racing again, and he couldn’t breathe. He whipped around again, and Kai’s chair was empty. Sehun caught a flash of white and found Kai weaving away through the crowd. His ghost looked plenty alive and real in the sunlight, but when he turned back around and gave Sehun one last look, those were definitely the same eyes as the night before. Then he turned and vanished into the crowd. 

“Sehun are you okay?” He pulled on Sehun’s arm, and Sehun let Baekhyun drag him another block and into the cool lobby of the marine science center, where he sank down into a soft chair beside a bubbling tank full of local fish. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, about a breath away from sobbing, and Baekhyun sat down next to him and rubbed his shoulders. 

“It’s okay, you’re okay.” 

“I’m sorry, I almost died last night.” 

“Just breathe, Sehun.” He pulled Sehun into a hug, and Sehun collapsed against him and let his heart rate slow down. It would probably have been unprofessional for the police officer to hug him the night before, but Sehun had wished he had all night. Baekhyun’s hug calmed him down much faster than a plastic cup of tepid water.

“I thought I saw him again.” 

“Kai?” 

“Yeah.” 

Baekhyun rubbed over his shoulders and held him tight. 

“What did he look like?” 

“Like… really hot.” 

Baekhyun bust into giggles. “Catch my out on the pier tonight trying to get a peak.” 

“Oh god, don’t even joke.” 

“Sorry, sorry.” 

He hugged Sehun around the shoulders and told him every fact he knew about the fish in the tank until Sehun felt like himself again, and decided he didn’t really need to pack his bags and leave before sundown. He could give it a few more days at least.

By the evening Sehun was beginning to think he’d hallucinated the whole ice cream shop incident due to some kind of trauma aftermath. The walk back home was a short one, and the sea breeze was so nice and the sunset was so pretty that Sehun took off his shoes and wandered down onto the beach. The sand was soft and warm between his toes. Sehun had always wanted to live on the beach, and as long as he avoided the pier at night, this might be the best place he would ever live. 

It wasn’t windy like the night before. The waves lapped gently on the shore, only a couple feet high as they crested and broke about thirty feet out. The pier was a good distance away. Sehun tossed his shoes on the sand and waded in until the warm water washed in half way up his calves and then rushed out again around his ankles. 

He stood there for a long time, staring out at the waves and the vast, smooth expanse of the ocean. It had been a rough day, but the ocean would never fail to make him feel better. 

There was a man out in the waves, right in front of Sehun. Probably going for the last swim of the day. It was a little too chilly to swim. This guy must have been one of those tough guys who didn’t care about the cold. Sehun hadn’t seen him go out. When had he gotten there?

It was a little too dim to see him clearly, but it looked like he was standing still instead bouncing up and down in the waves, even though he was pretty far out. There was something eerily familiar in those round shoulders and unwavering stillness, and… it looked like he was facing the shore, which would mean… that he was looking right at Sehun.

Sehun’s breath caught in his throat and wouldn’t unstick. He could feel his heartbeat in his hands as all the hair on his neck stood up again. The shape of the man in the water stayed still for just a moment more, and then he slid forward, closer to Sehun, and slipped beneath surface. Sehun’s legs wouldn’t move fast enough. He backed up out of the water and didn’t feel safe until he was half way up the beach with his shoes in hand. The man still hadn’t resurfaced. Sehun didn’t wait to see if he would. He ran all the way home and locked his door.

Living on the beach was much less appealing when Sehun couldn’t even get in the ocean without getting haunted. At least it would be too cold for swimming until summer, so until then he wasn’t missing much. Sehun parked his car by the side of the road and stepped out. In front of him there was a little wooden fence, and then the ground fell away into the gentle swells of the dunes in the moonlight, and then the sparkle of the ocean. He could hear the waves, even this far back, and the breeze smelled like salt and brine. He really didn’t want to move away. 

Baekhyun’s beers were getting warm in the back seat. He’d said they were his favorite, from a distant craft brewery, and they could only be found at the little liquor store in the next town over, so when Sehun had lost his fifth game of dolphin chess in a row and fair was fair or something, Baekhyun had sent him to go get some. The drive through the dunes at night was gorgeous anyway. 

His phone dinged. Baekhyun wanted him to get back as soon as he could. Sehun decided he really needed to get gas, and maybe stop by the grocery, and then go check if his stove was off. His phone dinged with empty threats and Sehun ignored them and got back in the car. 

There was a little gas station right at the edge of town, and old run down thing. It was empty except for a woman inside with her face buried in a novel. Sehun could see a concerningly muscled man in a kilt on the cover all the way from the other side of the pumps. She probably wouldn’t even notice him. She didn’t budge as he battled with the machine and selected his gas. 

Sehun had just locked the handle of the nozzle in place when a shiver ran all the way up his spine and the hair on his arms stood straight up. He searched the dunes across the road over the top of his car, expecting to see the shape of a naked man marching towards him from the sea, but in the bright moonlight there was only grass. The feeling didn’t go away. He reached for the nozzle to stop the gas and leave when he heard the gravel crunch softly to his left, a little behind him. 

He whipped around. Kai stood there, on the other side of the pumps, as still and tall as he’d been on the pier, eyes glowing like a cat in the lights of the gas station. Sehun’s blood ran cold as Kai stepped closer, moving towards him. 

“You’re a little far from the pier,” he tried, but his voice shook. Kai kept coming. Sehun felt trapped between his car and the pump and the hose, still pumping gas very very slowly into his car. 

“Why should I be at the pier,” Kai said, in a voice so soft and smooth that Sehun was sure he’d imagined it. “I don’t live there.” He passed into a shadow and his eyes stopped reflecting the light, turned soft and brown and almost human.

Sehun was so shocked to hear him talk that he didn’t respond or move until Kai was right on the other side of the pumps. He was in the same open shirt and board shorts that he had been wearing at the ice cream place. No shoes. He stepped up onto the curb between the pumps, gaining a few inches on Sehun, and his eyes flashed yellow again. Sehun could see the veins through them. He flattened himself against the car and wondered how fast Kai would catch him if he tried to run. 

“A-aren’t you some kind of ghost?” 

“Is that what they think I am?” Kai smirked, like he had before he fell. His eyes turned brown again as he stepped closer, but he didn’t look any more human. “What do you think? Do I seem like a ghost to you?” 

Sehun had been very happy to think he was a ghost until right then, but he was just steps away, coming closer, and he seemed very solid and real. “No,” he breathed, and Kai stepped into his space, pressed him back against the car with his hands braced on the roof on either side of Sehun’s shoulders. The deep, salty scent of the ocean washed over Sehun. A little musky and almost fishy. Sehun took a deep breath and got a little sour edge too. Something like blood. 

“No,” Kai agreed, and pressed himself up against Sehun. He was solid and heavy. Sehun could feel his steady heartbeat where his bare chest pressed against Sehun’s arm between them, and his breath puffed over Sehun’s ear, but he was cold. Just as cold as the chilly breeze around them. “Don’t worry, we’re a long way from the sea. I won’t hurt you now.” A very strong arm wrapped around Sehun’s shoulders and pulled him closer. Sehun whimpered and tried to push him away, but his arms were like iron. “Mm, you’re so warm. And you smell so good.” 

“Leave me alone,” Sehun tried, but his voice shook so much he wasn’t sure Kai understood him. “You’ve killed people, get off me.” 

The gas was done, apparently. It jerked and clicked off loudly, echoing through the whole machine, and to Sehun’s surprised, Kai jumped hard. He whipped around and stared at the nozzle in alarm, and then slowly turned back to Sehun. 

“Why do you kill people?” 

Kai blinked at him slowly, still pressed up against him, face inches away. “I kill for the same reason you do.” 

“…huh? I d-don’t…” 

“I kill because I’m hungry. I’ve seen you eat meat, Sehun, don’t act so surprised.” 

Sehun’s stomach rolled. He could definitely smell blood now. He could smell it on Kai’s breath. “You eat people?” He gasped, and now he had a whole new level of horror to add to the what-if-he’d-jumped scenario that played through his mind all the time. 

“I eat whatever I can catch,” Kai said, smirking again, “and humans don’t swim very fast.” He leaned down, burying his face in Sehun’s shoulder, and Sehun gasped and writhed when he felt Kai’s mouth open over the curve of his bicep, felt his blunt teeth scrape over the fabric. Then he paused. “Is that a plastic bottle in your car?” 

Sehun froze, cheeks heating up with shame. “U-uh, it was that or a Styrofoam cup at Wendy’s. I swear I recycle, and I usually use a metal one.” 

Kai growled and suddenly his teeth weren’t blunt anymore. Sehun screamed as razor sharp spikes grazed his shoulder and ripped his sweatshirt and shirt away. Sehun could feel a little rivulet of blood run down inside his tattered sleeve. Kai licked over the stinging wound and hummed low in his throat as he sucked on the cuts. Sehun screamed again as something horribly sharp caught his skin. 

When Kai pulled away, Sehun had one more thing to scream about. He didn’t look human at all anymore. You wouldn’t even have to squint and tilt your head to see the freaky side. His mouth stretched too wide across his face, filled with a row of razor sharp, pointy teeth. One of his eyes had turned a flat, wide silver, and scales spread from his monstrous eye and mouth across his cheeks and into his hair, which had turned from brown to platinum blond on that side. 

Sehun sobbed and shrank away, shoulder burning. The cuts weren’t deep but they hurt like a bitch. “You’ll see me again, Sehun,” Kai hissed, “and it’ll be the last thing you ever see.” He finally let go, and backed into the trees from where he’d come, and Sehun sobbed and pressed his ruined sweatshirt to his bleeding shoulder. The stupid lady in the shop never even looked up.

It was amazing how much the town emptied out in one week. The crowds on the main drag thinned out, the vacation rentals emptied, and the snow birds packed up and shipped out to Florida or the Adirondacks or wherever their other seasonal residences were. Sehun’s bags stayed half packed spread throughout the living room, Kai stayed away, and Baekhyun kept giving him reasons to stay, like ‘potluck on Wednesday’ and ‘rescued sea turtle coming Thursday’ and ‘fried chicken Friday.’ But Sehun wasn’t getting much sleep, and the sturdy locks on the doors didn’t help him feel any safer as he slept under fragile windows. At least they were second floor windows. Every time someone knocked on the door, Sehun had to check out a few windows and then steel himself before he opened it, but as usual it was just Baekhyun. 

“We’re making seafood pasta. Move.” 

Sehun backed out of the way and let Baekhyun scurry up the stairs into his tiny living room. “How’s the shoulder bite?” 

“It’s fine.” Sehun pulled up his sleeve to show Baekhyun the mess of thin scabs on his shoulder. “Healing up, it’s not a big deal. I just can’t look at the ocean without feeling sick, you know?” 

Baekhyun stared out the window right across the street at the waves. “So what did we decide on? Swamp thing, beach bum edition?”

“Or like, the shape of water guy but less handsome and more horrifying.”

“Thought you said he was hot,” Baekhyun grunted as he dumped shrimp into a bowl and began ripping legs off. 

“He is when he looks human.” 

Baekhyun looked around the room and sighed at all of Sehun’s half packed boxes. “I don’t want you to leave, but I also don’t want you to get murdered by a psycho swamp thing. Do you want me to start sleeping over at your house?” 

“I mean, do you live farther away from the ocean?” 

Baekhyun nodded. “Yeah, I live, like, in the dead center of town.” 

“Then I’d rather come sleep at yours.” 

“Yeah dude, anytime.” 

"Nice, I'm going to take you up on that. I might actually get some writing done." Sehun settled on the couch and dozed offas Baekhyun cooked, and woke up to a steaming plate of spaghetti with shrimp and crab. “Wow, this is awesome. I’ve been eating sandwiches for dinner since I got here.” 

Baekhyun laughed and rubbed his non injured shoulder. “If you come stay at my house, I’ll teach you how to cook for yourself a little.” 

“Please.” 

“Free cooking lessons for anyone who buys me my beer and actually brings it to me instead of getting bit by monsters and abandoning game night. Hey, have you seen actually seen Kai in a while?” 

Sehun shook his head. “Not since the gas station.” 

Baekhyun hummed and nodded. “You still haven’t told me what happened.”

“I was pumping gas and he came out of the woods and kind of hugged me, but like, threateningly? And he told me he wasn’t a ghost and that he ate people and then he told me he would be the last thing I ever saw and bit me over a plastic bottle in the back seat.” He shuddered even as Baekhyun giggled over the swamp thing being mad about plastic. “And then he did the creepy transformation I told you about.”

The spaghetti stopped looking appetizing as Sehun thought of his iron grip and the smell of sea and blood, and of the sharp teeth in his shoulder and the way he had screamed and struggled and nothing had made a difference. 

“Was he warm?” 

“No…” 

“So he’s alive, but he’s not human. If he’s cold blooded like a fish, he might really slow down in the winter. Maybe we won’t see him until spring.” 

“Right,” Sehun huffed. “That would be awesome. I won’t have to finish packing.” 

“Man, that’s so fucking exciting, like, I wish I could study him and write a paper on him or something, but I know it would just wreck my career. Nobody would believe it. But I wonder if there are others like him, you know? They could drastically change the ecosystem. He’s obviously a top predator. Maybe he looks after the ocean. Maybe he doesn’t give a fuck, but he’s still part of the food web, you know? And he cares about ocean plastics.” 

“Mm, exciting for you, maybe.” 

Baekhyun leaned against his shoulder. “Sorry, just trying to re-contextualize him or something. I know he’s a creepy murderer, but if he’s not human, isn’t he just a regular predator? Preying on prey? Maybe he’s not psycho, he’s just doing his thing. Like a shark or a crocodile.” 

“Baekhyun, humans don’t murder each other because we can empathize. Kai isn’t an animal, he’s intelligent, if he wasn’t psycho, he wouldn’t murder other intelligent creatures.” 

He could feel Baekhyun shrug. “If I lived in the ocean right now, I wouldn’t consider human’s intelligent creatures. And the only reason we eat meat these days is because we have a long tradition of doing so. That kind of killing is something we’re desensitized to. I don’t think most meat eaters would kill an animal themselves, you know.” 

“Yeah…” 

“If he and his kind have a culture of killing humans for food, maybe he’s not thinking about the ethics.” 

That did strangely make Sehun feel better. He liked the possibility that Kai wasn’t psycho. People who weren’t psycho could be reasoned with. “Were the first people to kill animals psycho?” 

“The first people to kill animals were surviving, Sehun. And they had already been predators in the ecosystem long before they were intelligent.” 

“Maybe I’ll be vegan.” Sehun frowned down at his seafood pasta. “But I’ll start some other time.” He shoved a delicious shrimp in his mouth and his appetite returned. 

Sehun hadn’t see Kai in two weeks. It was getting much chillier. Sehun had on a thick fleece jacket, and it wasn’t doing much to hold out the cold wind. The waves had been so loud all morning that they had woken Sehun up, and from the boardwalk they looked steeper and angrier than Sehun had seen them in a long time. Huge, powerful swells that rose and crested and roared down onto the beach like pouncing dragons. The tourists had all left. No one was going for beach walks today, especially not first thing in the morning, and the sand was empty as far as Sehun could see. He couldn’t resist. 

It was high tide. The strip of sand between the dunes and the ocean was thin and steep. Sehun kicked off his shoes at the top of the boardwalk and wandered down onto the beach barefoot. Everything would be fine if he just stayed alert and ran if Kai showed up, which he probably wouldn’t if he was cold blooded like Baekhyun said. It was pretty chilly out. 

The waves crashed powerfully onto the sand, and turned from flat, cloudy gray like the sky to blue and green as they crested and broke. Sleeping at Baekhyun’s was safe, but he’d missed the sound of the surf at night. As much as he wanted to keep his eyes peeled for Kai, it was hard not to close them and let the sound wash through him like a siren’s song. He took a deep breath and inhaled the salty sea breeze. 

The waves were almost eight feet high. Surfers would have loved them if it was the right season. Sehun’s throat closed up a little as they rose above the beach. They stretched up and flowed forward, fluid and beautiful, and then crashed with magnificent power against the sand. It was breathtaking. 

One wave rolled towards him on the beach, a really big one. Sehun backed a little further up onto the dry sand. It plowed forwards, growing taller and steeper. The ocean pulled back over the wet sand and the wave grew until white foam began to appear along the top. It crested, a solid eight foot wall of rushing water, and Sehun gasped as a massive fish tail flickered through the inside of the wave. It was at least six feet long and shiny silver. The sharp tips of the tail fin broke through the surface, glittering in the dull sunlight, and that was all Sehun saw before it crashed down onto the beach with a deafening roar. Sehun searched the surf for the massive fish, maybe a shark, and hoped he could spot it before it washed back out.

But Sehun didn’t see the giant fish. Instead, his heart jammed itself in its throat as the rushing water caught on something. A head with platinum blond hair. The wave receded and left the terrifying figure of Kai crouching on the wet sand, staring up at Sehun with a wide, fishy grin. There were silver fins sinking into his arms past his elbows, gills flattening into his neck, and scales all over his body fading into bronze skin. His too-wide, razor sharp grin and silver eyes shrank slowly into something human, but Sehun didn’t wait to see the full transformation. He turned around and sprinted back up the sand. He could hear Kai’s feet pounding up the wet sand behind him. 

Sehun ran and ran. He left his shoes where they were and ignored the pain of the concrete under his feet. He ran up the closest street and across the empty highway without looking. He didn’t slow down until he reached Baekhyun’s door. He tested the handle. It was locked, but when he spun around there was no one behind him. Just a quiet peaceful street in the early morning. Sehun sank down on the doorstop and let himself sob, dragging in frantic breaths and trying to keep his heart from stopping. His ribs and lungs and heart ached with effort, but he kept his teary eyes fixed on the entrance of the street, waiting, knowing he would have to run again soon. 

He banged on Baekhyun’s door a few times, feeling more and more frantic. There was a figure a few blocks down, walking closer. Sehun couldn’t tell if it was Kai or not. He had just managed to make out a bare bronze chest and an odd skirt woven from seaweed or something when the door finally opened, and Sehun tumbled inside and slammed it behind him. He locked the deadbolt and looked out the window. Kai stopped walking.

“Sehun, what the hell happened?” Baekhyun got up on his tiptoes next to Sehun to look out the window. 

“There he is,” Sehun gasped, barely intelligible. Baekhyun gasped too and squinted. Way down the road, Kai turned around and began to walk back towards the ocean. “Mermaid, Baek. He’s a mermaid. I saw his tail.” 

“Oh!” Baekhyun slapped a hand over his forehead. “Fucking duh. Why didn’t we guess that? Wait, did you run all the way here from the beach?” 

Sehun nodded. He let Baekhyun pull him away from the door and onto the couch. “I’m going to grab you some water. Breath and calm down, okay? He’s not going to get you today.” 

They sat in the quiet for a while, Baekhyun with a coffee and Sehun with a water, and Sehun let the sounds of the morning birds and cars calm him down. Baekhyun flipped through a magazine. 

“Do you think we should tell Kyungsoo,” Sehun said after a while. 

“Um. We could, but I really really doubt he could do anything. The mayor barely gave them enough funding to even put locks on the pier and signs about naked men up. He’s not the superstitious type. If he finds out they’re wasting any more funds trying to catch a mermaid, somebody will get fired.” 

“Oh.”

Baekhyun nodded. “I mean, he’d do it if it meant saving your life. And the lives of whoever Kai catches next.” 

Sehun shook his head. “They’ve got better locks and signs up now, and Kai’s only hunting me because I got away the first time, I think. If he can’t lure anybody else off the pier, things will be fine, right?” 

Baekhyun shrugged. “Yeah probably. Listen, I’m going to get you a knife and I want you to carry it with you all the time and never go anywhere without me.” 

“Okay.” 

The knife did make Sehun feel better, and he kept sleeping on Baekhyun’s couch. He saw Kai once attracting odd looks in his usual summery tourist attire, watching him as he and Baekhyun walked back from lunch. “That’s him, Baek. Look, that’s him.” 

Baekhyun looked up at Kai leaning against the railing and breathed, “whoa. Oh my god, he’s gorgeous.” Sehun had to drag Baekhyun away as he gaped up at him. 

“Don’t forget he turns into a horrifying murdermaid, Baekhyun.” 

“Yeah, but… you think he’d be down for kinky hate sex before he keeps trying to kill you? Because dude you should definitely try to negotiate that.” 

“Yeah, because the last cuddle we had went so well.” 

“Maybe he’ll have kinky hate sex with me instead.” 

Sehun took him firmly by the shoulders and steered him away. “Baekhyun, remember what he really looks like? Hate filled fish eyes. Fins and gills and shit.” 

“Right, right.” He finally let Sehun turn him all the way back around. “But how could you not at least consider fucking a real life mermaid?” 

“I don’t want to die, Baekhyun. Besides, what if he has a fish dick?” 

Baekhyun gasped. “Shape of water style?” 

“Oh my god. Did they actually show his dick in the movie?” 

“No,” Baekhyun huffed, and was way more sulky about it than Sehun wanted him to be.

The weather got colder, dipping close to freezing at night. Sehun didn’t see Kai for a long time. Long enough that he felt safe enough to sleep in his own little apartment by the beach and walk to and from work by himself. 

Today on the way to work, as he looked down at the beach from the boardwalk, he saw a that some horseshoe crabs had come up on the beach the night before. A few of them hadn’t made it back into the water. There were a couple molts lying around, and a couple horseshoe crabs still waving their little legs in the air, trying to flip themselves over. If they hadn’t managed it already, they probably wouldn’t. Sehun paused by the walkway down to the beach and frowned. He should probably let nature run its course. One of them at the bottom of the ramp got itself turned about thirty percent of the way over and the fell back on his back when it’s tail couldn’t get enough traction in the sand. Soon its gills would dry out and it would suffocate. 

Sehun scanned the beach again. The pier was behind him. The waves were gentle this morning. There was nobody in sight. No murdermaid, but no witnesses either. The horseshoe crab flailed around pathetically. It was a chilly morning. If Kai hadn’t shown his face in weeks, he wouldn’t show it now. Sehun took a deep breath and marched down onto the sand. The one he’d spotted was a large female one. Sehun had to dodge her pointy tale when he picked her up, but he rushed her down to the water and set her in the surf, right side up. She headed out to sea. Sehun took a moment to look to look around. Still no murdermaid. The little waving arms of another one up the beach called his attention. He went to get that one too. Start time at work was kind of a soft suggestion anyway. 

He moved down the beach, away from the pier and towards a long jetty of rocks that marked the end of the swimming area, getting more and more confident. He had Baekhyun’s knife in his pocket and a ramp to safety in sight wherever he was, and he’d already proved he could outrun Kai if he had to. Four more horseshoe crabs slid to safely under the waves. It was a nice way to spend the morning. It had been forever since he’d taken a walk down the beach. 

On the other side of the rock jetty, the beach stretched onward, but this area was mostly used for fishing. A couple tall, weathered no swimming signs stuck up out of the sand and the rocks. The horseshoe crabs couldn’t read. They had swum up here too. Sehun saw a couple overturned ones. One was dead. The other twitched feebly. Sehun rushed it down to the water and let it go. 

A sudden splash caught his attention. Sehun jerked upright and whipped around, expecting to see Kai coming towards him, but he didn’t see anything. There were still more horseshoe crabs to be saved, but Sehun was beginning to think letting nature run its course might be the best thing.

He turned to go, and heard the splash again. This time he saw where it was coming from. Out by the end of the jetty, in the water, the water turned and boiled as something very large thrashed next to the rocks. Sehun wondered if it was something really cool chasing the little fish, but then he noticed the buoys bobbing frantically right next to the splashing. A fisherman would probably find something very big in his net later. Sehun wondered if it was a shark or something that shouldn’t be in there. 

Suddenly the pointed end of a big silver tail broke the water, and then a hand, also silver and scaly and dripping blood, tangled in netting. He gasped. Against his better judgement, Sehun stood and watched as Kai struggled. The mermaid thrashed desperately in the netting, but it looked like thick nylon or plastic netting of some kind that didn’t want to be ripped through. Sehun wondered how long it would take him to die trapped in there, unable to move in the cold, unable to hunt. He was obviously scared. 

A sick sense of relief washed over Sehun. Kai was going to die. He would die in that net and then Sehun would be safe, but his feet wouldn’t move as his stomach churned. Safety would be nice, but Sehun knew he would never be able to look himself in the mirror again if he knew someone was going to die and chose to let it happen, murderous psychopath or not. He would never be able to forgive himself. Heart pounding, he got up on the jetty and climbed out along the rocks to where the net was anchored with more bright orange Styrofoam markers. 

Kai must have heard someone coming. The thrashing died down, and the next time Sehun saw a hand, it was regular human skin. Sehun saw him struggle and thrash again, more weakly this time. He got right up to the churning water and looked in. He couldn’t see Kai’s face while the water moved so much, and Kai probably couldn’t see his. He looked fully human, naked again. He was tangled hopelessly in the nylon net. It was wrapped around his throat and his arms and legs so tight that it had begun to cut into his skin in a few places, and it held him immobile under the water. If Sehun hadn’t known what he was, Kai would have looked like a drowning human caught in a fishing net, desperately in need of saving, but Sehun knew he could survive like that for at least a little longer. Still, he wondered if it was more difficult to breath when he was held in place like that. 

Kai stilled long enough for the water to settle. Sehun began to see that he was mouthing for help, and then the water stilled enough for Kai to see who it was. His jaw dropped, face coloring in shock, and he froze. Sehun watched emotions play over his face. Surprise, then realization, then hopelessness. Gills appeared along his neck again, and scales appeared along his legs, but net had got between them and they couldn’t become a tail again. The scales faded back into skin and Sehun could see his teeth start to chatter under that cold water, and he looked up at Sehun with something like sadness and regret like he was sure Sehun would leave him and let him die. There was still something hateful in his face. Even now, Kai still wanted him dead. And if Sehun let him go, it would take him a long time to climb along the rocks back to shore. Kai would probably catch him and kill him as soon as he freed him. 

Sehun took Baekhyun’s knife out of his pocket and flipped it open. Under the water, Jongin’s eyes went wide and terrified, and he thrashed and fought like his life depended on it, yanking at the net around his neck and fighting. Sehun stepped closer, heart racing. He couldn’t believe what he was about to do, but he had to do it. Sehun held the knife up over the water and dropped it. 

He stayed just long enough to see Kai’s hand catch it before turning and struggling back along the slippery rocks as fast as he could go. Behind him the water began to churn again. The first two times Sehun slipped, he managed to catch himself, but he didn’t the third time. His ankle twisted painfully as it slid off an unstable rock and scraped along another one. Sehun yelled and carefully found another place to step and kept hurrying. The ankle hurt but it was still useable. Sehun tried to be more careful, but when he glanced back, a long silvery fish tail with sharp, shark-like tailfins, built for speed, burst out of the water. He was almost free. 

Sehun had just reached the end of the jetty with scraped up ankles when the thrashing stopped. He hit the beach and started running, slowed down by the pain in his ankles and the loose sand. He was distressed to find the nearest ramp off the beach was farther away than he expected. Something burst out of the water behind him. He didn’t bother to look back, but he couldn’t go fast enough. He sobbed as one of his ankles gave out and he came crashing down, so close to the ramp. 

It was like a nightmare. Before he could get up, Kai was on top of him, breathing heavy. Sehun cried out and tried to remember how to scream, but he felt like he couldn’t get enough air. Kai flipped him over and put a hand over his mouth before he got a chance, and all Sehun could do was thrash and struggle like Kai caught in the net. 

“Sehun, I’m not going to hurt you, please calm down.” 

Kai’s voice was softer now than it had been at gas station. One of his eyes was still silver, and his hair was still blond. Scales covered a third of his face, from his nose into his hairline on one side, but Sehun had never seen him look so human. He didn’t have the scary psycho look on his face anymore. He looked confused and concerned. Sehun caught sight of Baekhyun’s knife lying next to them in sand, like Kai had tossed it there. He took a few deep breaths, still braced to keep fighting. 

“Why did you do that?” Kai asked, and his voice shook a little. He carefully lowered his hand from Sehun’s mouth. The scales receded into his skin, and his eye faded to brown. “You could have just let me die and been safe. You clearly didn’t think saving me would keep me from killing you.” 

Sehun gasped in a few more breathes until he thought he might be able to talk again. 

“I-I’ve never killed an-nything. I c-couldn’t just… let someone die—” his voice broke over a few stray sobs and prayed that Kai would at least let him go this time.

Kai knelt over him, looking so confused, and Sehun began to hope. 

“I owe you my life,” Kai murmured. “You have nothing to fear from me anymore. Thank you.” And to Sehun’s shock, he leaned down and kissed him. Just a little peck on the lips, lingering and sincere, and left the taste of sea breeze on his lips. 

He sat up, resting back on Sehun’s thighs, and Sehun took a deep breath and let that sink in. Kai wasn’t going to kill him. He was safe. Sehun covered his face with his hands and let himself cry. Kai’s weight left his legs, and he curled onto his side in the sand and let the panic ebb away. 

Kai was still there, looking like a totally normal human guy with his long, golden body and incredibly thick thighs, watching Sehun cry with an unsettling kind of fascination. Sehun’s skin still crawled at the sight of him.

The mermaid watched him as he staggered to his feet and stumbled gingerly away. Sehun glanced back a few times just because he didn’t like having the mermaid behind him, but Kai stayed sitting on the sand, blinking at him with sultry, curious eyes. He didn’t follow. At the top of the ramp Sehun turned around again, and was treated to a wonderful view of Kai’s gorgeous, stupidly toned butt as he strolled back down the beach towards the waves. Then he limped the rest of the way to work so he could let Baekhyun patch him up and tell him all about it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Its not the first time i've written spooky but it's the first time i've published spooky so i really want to know how it is. Come follow me on twitter at @M_M_Socks. I post wip ideas and updates and screenshots of what i'm working on sometimes, and geek out about exo or course.


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